President Bush signs controversial anti-piracy law

By eSchool News

October 14th, 2008

President George W. Bush signed into law on Oct. 13 a controversial bill that would stiffen penalties for movie and music piracy at the federal level, Reuters reports. The law creates an intellectual property czar who will report directly to the president on how to better protect copyrights both domestically and internationally. The Justice Department had argued that the creation of this position would undermine its authority. The law also toughens criminal laws against piracy and counterfeiting, although critics have argued that the measure goes too far and risks punishing people who have not infringed. The Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America backed the bill, as did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "By becoming law, the PRO-IP Act sends the message to IP criminals everywhere that the U.S. will go the extra mile to protect American innovation," said Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Counterfeiting and piracy costs the United States nearly $250 billion annually, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Richard Esguerra, a spokesman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he was relieved to see lawmakers had stripped out a measure to have the Justice Department file civil lawsuits against pirates, which would have made the attorneys "pro bono personal lawyers for the content industry." But the advocacy group Public Knowledge argued that the law went too far, especially given that fair use of copyrighted material was already shrinking…